


In The Shire

by Iced_Coffee



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Female Bilbo Baggins, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 03:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18189029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iced_Coffee/pseuds/Iced_Coffee
Summary: Life in the Shire was dull, but comfortable. To Billa, it was neither, although the smell of rain on her farm plot was pleasant enough to bare it.





	1. Chapter 1

Her late mother’s family home had never been so empty. In the years after Billa’s parents deaths, she refused to do as much as open their bedroom door, only listening to the empty echoing of her bare feet on the cold wooden floor. She was an only child, the sole heir to her beloved parent’s estates, inheriting everything, from the dirt on her front lawn, to the grains of rice in the pantry: she owned all except her own happiness. Billa would be happy to leave, if it did not mean leaving the remnants of her mother’s unfinished knitting, and her fathers smudged maps. She barely dared to leave the hold of Bag End often these days, when the sky was cold and the ground coated inheavy white snow.

She went only as far as the market once a week as to assure her distant relatives of her continued existence, to their annoyance. It was mostly for food, even though she ate little since her parents passing, she didn’t dare touch the panty for fear of the colder days ahead. Once a month, when the men wandered from Bree, she dared to peer into their stalls searching for new maps of Middle Earth, and well spun thread to decorate her few belongings. She once purchased a striking blue yarn as to follow her mother’s teachings, but her hands trembled beyond her control and off came the stitches every time. 

She lingered in the memory of her parents, sitting in the warm glow of the fireplace as her hands skillfully created Elanor flowers on the hem of her cloak. Most of her winters were spent in a daze, only the pinprick of her needle jolting her out of the strange trances that blanketed her thoughts. She did not remember most of the cold days, not since the frost that took her mother. Perhaps it was the cold that leached into her bones, or the undersized meals, but nonetheless every fall as the leaves grew thin and frail, she followed in the next few weeks.

Some days she was glad the cold passed in a strange blur. She didn’t see her mother’s dusty grey cloak in the marketplace, tarnishing the peace she tried so desperately to think she had. She didn’t see the eerie stillness in her father’s eyes reflected in the shiney glow of the ice, staring into her with every second she looked back. She thought it better this way, even though she missed the rich coco on her tongue every Giving Day, and the bite of the wind as the Men’s sled passed through town. It was far worth the alternative of seeing the disappointment in her neighbors eyes as she flinched away from every cloak and patch of ice that she spotted. It was better this way. 

The first day of spring was the only day Bella allowed herself to forget about her parents. Only when the warm wind rattled through open windows, and the sun melted the numbness in her bones did she dare wander outside. It was only when her garden flooded with water and the grass sprouted green that her lips curled upwards and she pressed her winter cloak into the very bottom of her wardrobe. The first step into the melting Shire always managed to take her breath away, leaving her standing on the doorstep for hours. The first press of her foot to the slippery mud, to feel the earth sink under her feet, to feel the fresh warm breeze in her hair, and to smell the forest flowing into the fresh green hiding under the ivory dead of winter.

It was the only time she felt whole enough to savor the world she was in.


	2. Impasse

It was not often that Billa would be seen outside of her yard, but one thing every hobbit could count on was her tending her garden come spring. She would yank out all the leftover plants and debris from winter, throwing them into compost, and then carefully till through the dirt for weeds. She relished in the feeling of grit under her nails, and green splashed over her clothes, the grassy smell lingering on her for hours. She rarely left her yard in the first weeks of the growing season, too afraid of loosing her plants to a small problem. It defiantly wasn’t that Billa wasn’t anti-social, just that she would rather spend her days alone, with the sun beating down on her back as she maintained her beloved garden. It was the only constant in her life besides the fall of snow come winter. 

Billa cared naught for the social niceties and the gossip behind her every time she ventured out, carefully skirting the crowds to finish her errand as quickly as she dared. The whispering didn’t affect her as much as it probably should have, but she had more important things to worry about besides marital status and the state of her hair. It wasn’t as if Billa was old to be unmarried, in fact she was still rather young, her face held little happiness, but the lack of wrinkles freed her from seeing her mother in every mirror. Billa could remember when it bothered her quite a bit more in the days leading up to her majority, when her cousins had married, and her former classmates were ripe with unborn children. The sound of childish laughter followed them wherever they wandered, the sound mocked Billa for an entire year, with every child that stepped up to her door, all she heard was her own echoing giggle alongside her father’s chuckle, haunting her in the children she so desperately wished she was. Even now, as she tried to overcome her parent’s death, it was the little things that got to her almost every time. Perhaps it was best that she stay away until every passing laugh didn’t fill her with overwhelming anger. 

These days, she just tried to be Billa. Rather unkempt compared to her peers, skin darkened with sun, arms strung with muscle, and none of the plumpness she saw in her cousins. She was quiet in the eyes of her neighbours, filled with a strange melancholy that only broke when she tilted her head upwards in the dark of night, with warm rain streaming on her face. From her distant family, she was gifted with a Tookish sense of wonder, and cursed with the heart of a Baggins. And to the pleasant lady that sold her seeds every year without fail, she was a lost soul that just needed to get out.


End file.
